1. A heartache
Six months into the war, we have reached the month of Nissan, the smell of citrus blossoms is in the air, and our hearts ache. The war goes on and our brothers and sisters remain in captivity. Looking inward, I discover that this heartache is not the result of the fighting in the south or the war that awaits us in the north; it comes from the sights that I thought we had rid ourselves of, but which have now returned to our streets. The harsh statements – which we were familiar with in the year before October 7 – of a certain social group toward vital sections of the population, as if they did share a common destiny. Who talks in such a terrible manner at a time when our soldiers are fighting for our lives? Every time I hear these vulgar words thrown out into the air, I am reminded of what the founder of our nation said: "Surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me…" (Genesis 20:11).
It is not only fear of God that is lacking, but also fear of history itself. With civil war raging in besieged Jerusalem in the year 68 CE, the officers of the Roman army advised their commander Vespasian to take advantage of the internal turmoil and storm the town. Vespasian was of a different opinion: Let the Jews finish each other off, he said, and Jerusalem will fall into our hands like a ripe fruit, he told them. To our disgrace, Vespasian was right. Now back to the present time: The demonstrations on our streets do not express concern for the fate of the nation nor for the fate of our hostages; they are nothing more than social narcissism that seeks to subjugate us all to their worldview. They have no self-criticism just blame for others. Listen carefully to the crude words hurled in our direction; they lack any awareness and pain reality in one uniform color absent any fear of God.
2. Refuted by reality
I have heard the claim made that until October 6 our international standing was good, and it is only after October 7 that it began to decline. Many times, this claim comes along with the conclusion that the solution is a Palestinian state. Unbelievable, but there are still those within us who are naïve enough to think that there is some substantial difference between the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria.
The difference is purely technical: In the Gaza Strip, we pulled back to the last centimeter after we showed our enemies that we were not willing to fight for our hold of the territory. We hoped that they would make Gaza blossom and show the skeptics that there is still hope for peace. What has happened since is not an accident; Hamas didn't take over the Strip by chance. The supreme mission of the forces of evil surrounding us is to destroy the State of Israel. To do so, they are willing to sacrifice everything. The lives of their people are secondary to the supreme goal. This is written in official documents and said in thousands of statements, interviews, and speeches, and in deeds. The second we no longer control the Samarian hills, God forbid, a Nazi terror state will be established there, and it will seek to copy the massacre of October 7. That is the logical conclusion from one hundred years of history.
October 7 showed us what their goal is. If they could, they would have massacred all of us. After all, they thought they would conquer Israel and divided it into cantons and appointed governors. In the face of reality, the fools still murmur "a Palestinian state" and "the two-state solution."
3. Nicaragua, Iran and Israel
I was interviewed by the BBC about the lawsuit filed in the International Court of Justice in The Hague by Nicaragua against Germany for supplying weapons to Israel. This is a failed South American country, ruled by a dictatorial regime of terror that has sheltered economically under Iran's wing. Now Nicaragua is preaching morality. As in the case of South Africa, Iran uses its proteges around the world against the Jewish state and the West. We are fighting Hamas, Hezbollah, the Syrian militias, the Houthis in Yemen, and more, while the head of the snake counts the cash without paying a price. Iran should know that nothing lasts forever.
Where were all the good souls when Syrian President Bashar Assad massacred half a million of his citizens and displaced 11 million of them, who have never been allowed to return home? When Arabs or Muslims massacre their own, the world utters a few feeble words to fulfill obligations. When Jews defend themselves and attack their enemies, the world makes an effort to stop us. The hypocrites of the world assigned Jews one role in history: to be victims and thus to continue to represent the founding image of Western civilization over the past two thousand years: a crucified Jew. With the establishment of the State of Israel, Jesus came down from the cross, put on his prayer shawl, and returned to being a Galilean Jew in his land, only now he holds arms and defends himself against crucifixion. Antisemites are not prepared for such a change in history. Similarly, in the Muslim world, the Jews were humiliated dhimmis [protected subjects] who had to pay the jizya, a tax allowing us to remain in their countries. This status changed with the establishment of the State of Israel. Suddenly, the Jews have become sovereigns in their land, and this on an existential level is not acceptable to radical political Islam, of which Iran is the spearhead.
In a world of formative images such as the above, it is important not to fall into a rational trap, and to pretend we are not interested in symbols and words, but only in economic and political interests. We've been there already. We thought Hamas preferred economic welfare to the destruction of Israel. We were proved painfully wrong. Some of us still think that the Palestinian Authority prefers economic welfare over our destruction. Maybe one day we will learn?
4. Historical materialism and metaphysics
The military campaign in the south is burdened by decades of political, military, and ideological neglect because, in our pursuit of temporary quiet, we preferred not to read the Hamas charter as a plan of action, but as mere words. Anyone who interprets the present scenes in the Gaza Strip as the end of the war or, God forbid, as a loss, hastens to determine the middle as the end. We are still at war; we are not done. The same applies to the growing international pressure, which leads those who declare "the war is over" to speak of "deteriorating standing"; they weaken our spirit while undermining the justice of our struggle. Such people read history on a materialistic level: a variety of interests, forces, and narratives without a clear truth. But we are an eternal people. Our history cannot be read only through such a perspective. Another dimension, the metaphysical, is required to understand it. Without that dimension it is doubtful that we could have survived in the valley of the shadow of death of peoples and nations, war and destruction, without a country, the prey of foreigners.
As we were taught by the wisest of men Ecclesiastes (5:7), "one high official is protected by a higher one, and both of them by still higher ones." There is no history in the world similar to ours. Since our Temple was destroyed and we were expelled from our land, we wandered in many countries. A large portion of us assimilated and became part of other peoples, a large portion of us was murdered in all sorts of ways. Yet still we live and exist. Moreover, we have managed to return to the land we were expelled from and re-establish our political independence and we did this just three years after a third of our people was destroyed and in a terrible war against great armies that invaded Israel to finish off what the Nazis hadn't managed to.
A people that survived the Holocaust is an eternal Nation. When we encounter difficult moments, we should take comfort and encouragement from the long path we have walked. It is an eternal promise for our continued existence. We did not return home to be destroyed again. Our current difficulties are temporary. In a few years, we will be in a far better place than we were on the eve of the war. We must have patience. And faith in the eternity of Israel.
